 Hello everyone and welcome to tomorrow episode 12 dot zero nine very glad to have you here My name is Jared. I've also got Sarah here as well We're gonna be co-hosting this show because we have an awesome guest today live by request Because you all asked him to come back. We have mr. Rod a pile on our today Last year you came on the show and it was an absolute riot to have you on here We talked about you know space stories and and talked about some things that maybe we'll talk about a little bit later again, and We'll Rod just to kind of get this started tell us a little bit about yourself for the folks who may not have caught the episode last year so I was born before the beginning of time back at the early start of the space age and Didn't realize until just a few years ago how fortunate I was to have grown up in the 1960s Well, I'm 70s kind of But I mean I was able to watch the the last part of the Gemini program live as it was happening I was able to watch all of all of Apollo live. It was happening. So as my friends were Trading football cards of baseball cards and the kind of things we did then I was there staying home from school playing hooky watching guys walking on the moon Which was great until Apollo 14 When the networks realized nobody was gonna die out there in that particular flight and right in the middle of the guys going up Side a cone crater. They cut off they cut back to days of our lives, and I love Lucy reruns I kid you not know the moon we got used to a little fast So that was my first lesson of space journalism. So I thought You know, I kind of thought I want to be an astronaut That's that right and then I thought I'm gonna want to be a planetary scientist And I thought no I want to be a space journalist because somebody's got to tell people how cool this is Yeah, because they don't get it and a lot of people still get it. No, which is why you guys are so important You're still working as well as a space journalist. So oh endlessly Yeah, I did four books last year actually five of you count the one I do for JPL So yeah, it was it was a very highly informative year for the public. So anyway, that's what I do now I had a bunch of careers and TV commercials and so forth and did visual effects on Star Trek for a while Which was great fun because it was the very end of the period. We got to work with the miniatures So instead of your CGI Look at it like actually physically moved things. Yeah, and and you could pretend you could go look it's a real spaceship and Practical at those moments see it's underrated Well and interstellar and a number of other movies the passenger those are all practical effects So yeah, so that was very cool And now I do space books and I edit a magazine for the National Space Society called at Astra Which if you're not getting copies you should be because it's really cool now You have to be a member of yourself. Do you have to be a member of the National Space Society to get No, all you have to do is sit here and talk to me and I will Wow look at this and it's like heavy paper Oh, you can actually file your navels on the cover. Yes, it's that kind of heavy So it's it's a quarterly and they've been doing it for 38 years now or something under various names, but it has just been a blast Well, I had to say hey, I'm your new editor now But it's it's you know, it's the mouthpiece the organization internally We're doing an Apollo special edition for mid-year and be about 90 pages and that one's gonna be available in public So we're hoping We can kind of open the door and get more members in if you guys aren't members You should be because if you were you would also get Which is the next 40 years or so in how we're gonna go out and this this looks like the in-flight Magazine on airplanes Well, it was interesting because you know if you're talking about space settlement What comes to most people's minds is oh the tin cans of space right or lava tubes if you're a little more with it But I thought you know, what's a soft way to say what does that really mean if you if you buy into the idea of space settlement Which we do It means Normal people living up there in shirts that we're doing right now Yeah, an environment like this and I thought let's use this Jim Vaughan is this illustrated views for the coverage of the magazine Let's use this picture of this little girl. Yeah, I just love that because it's like She's got a little teddy bear hanging down. Yeah, she does. She's just kind of she's just taking she's just checking out the view Yeah, like like anybody would at night. So, yeah, very very cool So I burned up that time pretty well Say if you could actually tell us a little bit about the National Space Society You know what what you do and if people do want to become members of it here. How do they do that just send checks? It's been around the late 70s So it was a merger of the National Space Institute, which Vaughan Braun started I was still at NASA To sort of get the word out to the public in a way to more direct the NASA public relations good because they kind of constrained at the time and of the L5 Society, which was Gerardo Neal's group. So they merged in I think 84 and They've been doing what they do ever since which is really just trying to spread the word of space settlement and the idea that Not just that but that a robust space program is really good for the country and really good for the world And that there's a lot of benefits to come It's not just about adventure and exploration, which are good things if you get into the philosophical side of the discussion But they only go so far, you know we are as I mentioned my new book space 2.0 entering a new space age and This one's gonna be driven by economics. It's not gonna be a geopolitics this time It's gonna be about people making money and finding ways to go out there and benefit all we hope everybody on earth So we talk about a lot of but we have an annual conference where we talk a lot about things like space solar power You know, you've got these big power stations up in orbit soon. We hope Beaming power down to the planet surface. We don't have to burn oil and kill ourselves anymore. So it's a pretty good deal So people can join by going to space.nss.org Yeah, I remember that right First year is 20 bucks. It's a great deal and you get the magazine Yeah, and a lot of people are asking in our chat room about how to how the plans are to normalize Sending people to space, you know sending people like us who aren't professional astronauts to space like what is that? What does that look like? It still looks like a big challenge I mean if you've been tracking which I'm sure you have virgin galactic you can see how hard it is you know, he was predicting 2008 yeah, we'll be flying in hours and You know with the best of intentions, it's turned out to be really hard. There's still you know, that hardest part is some right here to 62 miles up there after that it's gravy, you know As long as you got life support and some kind of propulsion system you're good to go But that initial vertical hop is really really tough. I think it's gonna look increasingly like Like what SpaceX and Blue Origin are doing I think rocket planes do still have a future But that straight old vertical lift using chemicals as they have been It's just a question of making it repeatable and recyclable and affordable, which is why I Think for me and a lot of people would disagree with this. I think but for me Watching the launch of the Falcon Heavy was kind of finally that Hammer drop that said bang the new space ages here, you know, it's happening again. You're watching it and it's this Billionaire who just said I like rockets I'm gonna build some and I'm gonna make them reusable and affordable and start sending a lot of people out there And he and Bezos have really turned this whole thing around now ULA and Northrop Gremlin and the other companies Are following that lead and they're reinventing themselves very quickly to be able to participate in this which is great But I think it really took these guys these eccentric guys if you can call them eccentric coming along Yeah, yeah, I'd like to be that eccentric percentage of it and and and look at Bezos, you know, here's a guy who's Cassuring a billion dollars of his own stock every year to finance this dream now He can do that for I don't know what another hundred and fifty years. So And you know, that's pretty good net worth, but I mean the commitment that takes is just breathtaking So I think that's what's gonna do it and ultimately finding reasons to be out there And that's been for so long part of the argument, you know, NASA has has been trying to sell the American public on the space program since 1961 on Kennedy first announced the Apollo flights and There's only so much you can say when you're doing it in that way for those reasons But when you're able to say, you know, we're gonna go out there and do commerce and you're gonna have a better life Benefits on earth benefits are people out there now. You've got a real conversation going well NASA with the asteroid redirect mission or arm They had an attempt at kind of getting into that commercial for-profit-ish aspect, but then that got defunded You think that's going to be resurrected as we get Farther along with this commercial. I you know, I kind of doubt NASA will go back to that There really was never a compelling reason to send people there except for the engineering exercise I think you know it gave SLS something to do right it was a big technological challenge, but If you want to go grab samples from an asteroid send a robot. They're smart, you know, they're not meatbags like us They do really well out there. Yeah, they don't complain. They don't need air. They don't need water They don't eat food. They don't rupture like we do, you know, they don't get cancer They just sit out there and get a little dumber as the radiation cooks. They're very old processor But you know it makes a lot of sense for machines to do that and I think overall when you talk about robotics versus people Which is kind of the classic national space society planetary society conversation robots are better now people are better We don't have that conversation anymore in the past You know, there's a place for both robots have to go first Yeah, and now because robots are getting really smart and we have additive manufacturing robots can only go first and look around and explore You know dig little trenches and stuff They can also prepare the infrastructure so that people go when it makes sense. Yeah, so hey go Robots go forth Gort and go in the lava tube and build my condo And then I'll go hang out there in comfort and you can go up on the surface and get irradiated. I think that's perfect Yeah, I was just thinking, you know with the ability to do telepresence and especially with VR It kind of becoming a very popular thing once again. Yeah, stuff like that actually could allow you to operate in places That otherwise you wouldn't really be able to operate in and you don't necessarily have to do it like You know in the lava tube underground and at the surface, you know I know there's been some ideas to put people on Phobos and have them operate robots on the surface of Mars as well so Without having well, you know without having to dive into the gravity well of Mars in order to do that But don't you want to dive into the gravity? I know I do You know, but but you talking about you know this telepresence and short latency and so forth I mean, I've been here in that discussion since well not hearing it but researching it since The late 50s early 60s when they were talking about Especially in the late 60s they're talking about doing food talked about this last time was here doing flybys of Venus and Mars With Apollo derived hardware. Yeah, because it's something you could do Well when asked well, why would we want to do, you know, you're traveling for the better part of a year or more For a 12 hour 8 hour fly by of this planet on the dark side this because we can control the robots right there with sticks Push buttons because robots were stupid and fallible then. Yeah, now they're really smart and they're really robust So is it that important to cross that last? Bit, I don't know, you know at Mars it makes sense because you're talking about 20 minutes. They're talking about doing robotic, you know essentially telepresence around the moon with the Lopchee or gateway or whatever it is this week. I think it's gateway now and Yeah, it kind of makes sense, but I just want to do something there. Yeah, if that's the best reason to do it in their book That's okay with me, but it also begs the question of what at a certain point What is being there? I mean, do we need to take our meat bags there to be there? Or do we have really sophisticated telepresence and at a certain point probably not that is in the future I bet you play computer games, right? Mm-hmm at a certain point in the future How are you gonna know the difference between here and there and being in the game and being outside and yeah there's the latency issue of the of the signal and so forth, but a certain point almost kind of wonder if Sensing that you're there is gonna be enough for most people, you know, and we just have machines doing it I mean the best way to go to space I think it's to transfer my consciousness. I'm volunteering into a little robotic cockroach about this big He's radiation proof. He doesn't care about about being in a vacuum. He doesn't care about Temperatures and all those things. He's just a little happy robotic cockroach You know, maybe said some little girl robotic cockroaches They'll look attractive enough after a while everything will work out and we you know our mass is very small We go off and explore Venus and Just that's my space program Well, I'm with you on done the transfer of consciousness if somebody could do that, you know figure that out very quickly I would have no problem exploring space that way, too That's it's like a very interesting way to actually go about doing that And I wouldn't mind going into a young Arnold Schwarzenegger's body But if but I think the cockroaches work better because they're yeah low mass just as long as the chassis looks good Yeah, so that's not in the roadmap to space. Yeah the way that's no That's my personal yeah, and it says isn't necessarily big on the robot thing. That's kind of my you know I'm a futurist right I personally what happens when you work at Griffith you get these kind of ideas because oh no, yeah Thought of that as well, but for me my question is Getting that information back because you haven't built those neural pathways you those memories of your cockroach. They don't get back to you So well in the case I'm describing I am the cock you you just become the cockroach that is your future They take my brain They take the little part of my brain that still works at my age and they say here We'll just stick it there the rest of it doesn't important then I want to go a lot bigger than a cockroach I want I want I'm a fan of the thumbs. I want to be able to manipulate things cockroaches are like Let me let me let me let me push the dirt ball. Yeah, they got six legs They have six legs that they got all that extra stuff walking. They have these They're six but we're getting a little weird here, aren't we but there's got to be a way you know I mean think of having a thorax now And you can bend up and you can use four of your arms up front so you don't need opposable thumbs, right? I could get a lot more done with four arms than I could with just how I am right now Think of being with donalds burger fries shake Diacos because I would because I'm weird enough to mix the shake with the diet coke. Look. I'm saving sugar And um, yeah with four arms you could just kind of Doesn't do much for dieting, but exercise would be interesting a lot of things to be interesting. Yeah, I got well if you're a robot exercise didn't matter And isn't that a cool idea? I can consume power and that oil. Yeah without ever gaining an ounce Oh, I like this better and better, right? Yeah But I think you know, we've got a lot of interim steps between here and and the road spots just a few Yeah, just a few and one of them is you know The solar system turned out to be so much nastier than we thought when I was a kid Oh, yeah, they hadn't done their first flyby yet. Yeah, you know And I remember I was old enough to remember that moment when mars died Because we had brate bradbury. We had edgar ice burrows. We had princes Dejah Thoris on mars and the thotes and all this cool stuff Mariner for Day right screwed everything up Maybe some methane bye. Yeah And I was doing this book panel at JPL. I don't know four years ago or something I thought how am I gonna open? I thought I noticed so I got up there and said hi I just want to let you people know that you ruined space for me and here's how You killed mars and they're like, what's wrong with this guy? Yep, but I mean we really had this great So we had the idea that at least the terrestrial worlds and solar system were kind of like other earths There was a little colder a little drier on mars and venus was probably warm and swampy and might have dinosaurs and the scientists Were thinking this at that point as a kid But a lot of people still this popular vision and we didn't know for sure even the scientists thought well Maybe there's lichen on mars and you know various plants and yeah, that's why those dark areas move around on mars That's why they shift in shape and things like that What was the deal with the wave of darkening? I still haven't read a good explanation of what that really was Well, maybe it was a dust storm. I don't see it now Anyway, we got out there and discovered the solar system was pretty hostile And space kind of hates people. Yes and says stay on earth where you belong Barstow is better than anywhere else in the solar system. So you know stay in barstow. Well I mean may not be as entertaining but environmentally it's better. You can stand there and breathe and you know, there's water somewhere Yeah, I've always said, you know, the mojave is basically mars, but about 200 degrees warmer So yeah about a thousand times kind of your body. Yeah, that too your eyeballs won't invert and go right? Plus all that radiation blocking of earth. Yes, there's also that too. So very handy And on mars, you know the thing that that that still gets ignored Just talking about how difficult is do these things and why we still haven't gone there even though in the 60s Von Braun I guys like that kind of promised me by the 80s We'd be there and I'm a little bad about that But if you saw the martian, which I'm sure you did I mean the first thing that kind of bugged me was oh, I lost part of my the structure of my habitat I'll just staple up some some plastic sheeting there. That'll be fine It you know Okay, but then he goes near he's farming his potatoes and I'm looking I'm thinking that's soils for a Full of perchlorates. Yes, your eyes would be fizzing your lips would be through You know, you'd be turning into a healer monster or something So it just I guess what I'm getting at is we got a lot of stuff to figure out And the more we study it the more we realize how hard it is So, yeah, let's let's let's go on. I think you've kind of hit on it. NASA has a pr problem of reality NASA deals in the real. That's a very good way to put it of the harshness of space And we want the fantasy we want venus to be we want mars one We because how hard can it be right at lisa I'll sell some reality show tickets. I was right. Is she a candidate? She she she knows a candidate Now she's looking away. She's not looking at us. Yeah Me and lisa know the same candidate. So I think we're just going to sit here quietly Well, there was a great there was a great article by by a woman named elmo keep who's I think in australia Yeah, who went through the process now, you know, you never go Oh, yeah, okay. So, okay, so I'm going to switch stories. So I was at the solar eclipse last year Or was it 17 or 18 17? It's enough to be time dilation due to age But I was at that solar eclipse. We were sitting in prineville, oregon Which is it was so sad because the the whole main street was lined with tables with eclipse t-shirts and glasses And they were going to make millions and it was eclipse apocalypse and all this kind of stuff They're looking up and down the street and there's nobody there. Everybody had gone further north. It was great for me Got a hotel There was the park down there But there was a guy that showed up who was going up to they were doing some rock concert kind of festival thing up in the woods Which I wanted to stay well away from I just wanted to see the eclipse. It was just there to see the eclipse not to, you know Bathe and mud and those kinds of things And um, this guy was in was a mars 1 devotee So it's me my son and then I says guy named Dave Dressler and this fellow And he is you know, because he knows I write books. He's got got to convince me Oh, this is a real thing and he's going on and on and my kids just staring at me through the whole thing because he knows me He's like he's just waiting for the out first. I was pretty good And I said well, you know, I've got some issues with oh no, no, you don't understand It was like this religious conversion experience going on I said, you know, let's just agree to disagree Dan and I said, you know, I worked at television a long time He's never going to get enough money off of reality tv sales to fund this And that's not enough anyway. He was talking about five or six billion dollars It's like, you know, it's really expensive to do this stuff. It's really hard to do this stuff You didn't even get a we're gonna have a later in 2014. I mean 16. I mean 18 20 It's like well, then how are you going to get people there? So Do things like that end up sort of souring the appetite for the public of doing things like this? That was my primary complaint. I don't mind vision. I don't mind drive of dedication I don't even mind a little fantasy because it did get a lot of people excited because they said, yeah, wait I could be a part of this for 36 dollars But I think most of us knew it was going to hit a wall and crash and burn And it has arguably and I think it makes it harder for the next person to come along So then you get something like dentistito and inspiration mars, which could have worked As long as you're willing to sit in that capsule for Nine months or whatever the round trip would have been that was a fly around Mars I think it makes it harder for people because so that's like that other Yeah, in fact, I remember when dentistito came out talking about inspiration mars There were so many comparisons to mars one when it came out even though it had been much better researched and much And you know funding sources were actually like trying to find those As opposed to just asking people to pay for an application Well, you didn't have to invent a lander You just flew around like you said you don't go down to mars's gravity. Well, you just sling by and come home And those I mean that's you know studies have been done by nasa, you know in the 60s That did that, you know with the polo applications program like you were talking with the crude venus fly by Right, you know that that there was an actual framework there that could have been developed around that The scary one was they had the mars fly by Or the venus fly by or the mars and venus fly by which I think was 18 months or 20 months or something Which of course by the time you came back you'd be It's because all that radiation, but that would have been a long time even in skylab Skylab size thing. Yeah, I'm less familiar with this mars. Uh, what is it experience? Oh, let's talk Yeah, yeah, yeah, no How would that have worked or um Planet dynamic wise if you just go orbit once or twice and no, there's no orbit So, oh you just fly by so that's why I said it's a year plus out there For an eight or 12 hour. Hey mars. How's it going? Oh, bye And then you're done but coming back from mars It's best to once you by the time you get out there the planets have changed position relative to each other So you would need to kill some time out there to make it easier to get back. Otherwise, you've got Quite the journey on the way home There actually are free return trajectories that you can launch yourself on where where the trajectory you've launched on And a little bit of the gravity from flying by mars ends up bending you back So you intercept the earth, but it's like it's like rod saying here We're like it's nine months to get to mars, but then it's like 15 to 18 months And maybe going past venus to get you right Why not throw in venus is I guess what i'm saying like well, it's just baking out there all that time But we still haven't solved the radiation problem. No, you know, yeah, we actually did a piece up at griffith observatory where it was Raising five They said they were raising five billion dollars to go to mars with the entire trip and No, who's that? Oh, no, no the mars one team. Oh, no. I said wow, they've really come a long way since I was there That's cool. Sinevelli's funding a small expedition to mars. Yeah, but Nice knowing you Yeah, but we did a piece where it was like, uh Oh, by the way, the toilet on the international space station cost 19 billion dollars Sorry million dollars, it's gonna say Whoa, that's nasa's budget this year. Hold on. Sorry guys. Yeah 19 million dollars for you know rnd and implementation Just it's just the toilet. It still didn't work great Just the toilet, but but it was way better than what they did in the Apollo era, which was the top hat, you know Yeah, well, I mean I met I met Al Warden the command module pilot of Apollo 15 And he wants uh, he said uh that that uh after they saw the top hat They used to joke that real men flew Apollo because didn't wear a an undergarment to catch everything Well, and they just didn't eat much that's where that's a real low residue dining comes in So you want it to go in and be absorbed and not see the lighted egg and actually I was with warden last week I went from Pasadena to Tucson for a festival of books there, which is cool 130,000 people showed up for a book festival Wow, the town's only like 330,000 or something. That's quite a few people. American can still read. Yeah, and they care, right? That was great. So we had these packed sessions. I was up with our own stern Who's really nice guy and jim hansen who wrote first man. I'm spending a lot of time thinking What am I doing on panels with these guys, you know, I'm a mid-list author So that was 82 degrees Then got on a plane and flew to Des Moines, Iowa for celebrate innovation week, which is this really cool conference This guy named tony poshton puts on does a great job. Hi tony and um Got off the plane. It was seven I'm not sure I've ever been in seven degrees. I'm not even sure I've been in single-digit degrees It was like walking into Superman's crystal palace of solitude or whatever it was. It was really shocking But anyway, um, that was for another event and we had an Apollo Astronaut panel and again, you know, so I got a warden and fred haze and wall cunning ham and jerry griffon the flight director there I'm standing on the stage trying to appear relatively calm and normal But inside it might These are Apollo astronauts. It was really incredible and and warden was just I mean he is the best storyteller And really knows how to relate those those tales about what they did to the public in a way that he gets the room He's very engaging. I mean they all were but afterwards we had to take him to the airport And tony said what do you want for lunch? And he said I've always wanted to try chick filet So we went to chick filet and the next thing you knew the entire kitchen staff is out there Will you sign our cow? You know the cow that says eat more chicken on the side Chick filet thing. It's like tony cows eat chicken. So these little stuffed cows So he was signing people's cows. He's very gracious. Anyway, that's not much of a story But that was my first meeting with outward. Yeah, he's a fun. I could spend a day with him a couple years ago at Workplace and uh, oh you must have been somewhat corrupted by the end of a whole day I was I heard I've heard stories of what it really was like to be a fighter jock in the 60s and 70s So it was very interesting. I have to say more fun than our lives. Oh, yes, absolutely Just a little bit. So what could be remembered? Or what could be spoken of right? So Yeah, just just a little bit interesting Thank you officer Well statute of limitations Anyways, uh, sort of to move on a little bit from this To sort of talk about, you know, apollo, you know big rockets capsules small spacecraft to have a It's very set concrete mission Going on there's there was obviously a very big amount of news this week about another big rocket with a small capsule trying to do a Very specific thing which was the space launch system and the movement of em1 to You know commercial launchers and things like that and uh, and uh, yeah, just you know Awake up and go what? Yeah, I think there were a couple of nasa centers that went they're doing it, you know Sort of like that. Um, and yeah that I mean, do you feel like that's kind of sort of like going to shift Things around like maybe there's a fire been lit under some people's butts Well, I think, you know, we saw that with the national space council with them being put back into action And pretty early on the part of the mandate Including, you know, the incoming trump administration was let's use our commercial assets to our best Advantage and that was one of the if there's a core to the space 2.0 book Which came out last week. Um, it is, you know, what is the sweet spot between nasa? Other international government agencies and the private sector all around the world But especially in the u.s. Because you I talked to I don't know I interviewed I think 40 people for this book so heads of international space agencies and nasa officials and When shot well at space x and rob mires and bourge and so forth And it you know, really the the big power in private space flight entrepreneurial space flight is in the u.s Because of our tax structure and the fact that we have a lot of billionaires here And it makes sense to do that. But where is this magical spot? That's going to make what we all want happen happen in space And you know, you look at nasa's own internal studies that say Yeah, you know space that can do things for somewhere between half and a tenth of what it costs us Maybe that's such a bad idea And and even jpl now is Looking at outsourcing a mission to india at least the fabrication and and some of the operation of it Because they did their first mars orbiter for 36 million with an m and it costs us hundreds sometimes as much as I think the insight was 800 million so it does make a lot of sense and You know, I think you've got to find that that That right balance but but getting specifically your point um, I think it makes a whole lot of sense to start flying stuff on um, the falcon heavy and ultimately new blend when it comes into operation because You know sls is just an expensive older design I don't know what it's going to cost per flight. I keep hearing a billion five But when I look at how far the manifest is going to go how many flights That's probably going to be in how much they spent doing it Just you know kind of redesigning the the Saturn five and twice the time it took through the Saturn five That's unfair, but you get the idea Let's not forget that nasa's operating on a tenth the budget it had then and doing 50 times as much stuff So it's difficult But I just don't think they're going to fly it out very long and it would be very expensive Yeah, I was kind of thinking, you know is What's really the problem at the moment with with nasa like besides pr obviously and talking And uh communicating there what there's a problem Like what's what's the current issue? Like why do we keep seeing things like uh like sls and other things happen? Is it is it political? Is it budgetary? Is it just culture? Yes. Yes, and yes I mean the budgets small compared to speaking at least compared to what it was in the 60s However, we should be able to do more with less than we have in the past because we Did a lot of heavy lifting then as did the russians as the soviet union at the time So, uh, what are the other reasons? Well institutionally It's Hardened a bit, you know They they don't have the kind of flexibility and you could talk to the the astronauts and the flight directors and the officials from the 60s And they'll tell you that criss-craft will tell you that It's not the flexible fleet of foot highly adaptive organization that it was There's a big conversation about taking risk how much risk can you take when you look at Apollo? What they were doing right on the bleeding edge with that hardware from the 1960s It's unbelievable that it worked the further we get from it the less I could believe it worked We're almost as far from Apollo now as it was from the Wright brothers first flight of canvas and wooden airplanes And I still have a hard time believing that we I mean I I have a Hard time Comprehending the fact that the Apollo program. You only had one accident Yeah, and it was on the ground considering what happened You know and what they were working with and just how far, you know, they were pushing the edge They only had one accident like you said it was on the ground. How did how did that even like how did that? Not happen, you know, I know well, and then if you go if you were going to you've gone to Kennedy Space Center, right? Okay, well, they've got a half You need to go you gotta have to want to go so tomorrow trip Yeah, I've got a partially finished lunar module. I think it's a test item test item three or something You can go up to it. So you see the lunar modules play up there like wow What a spaceship first first true spaceship, you know not designed to fly an atmosphere all Then you see the one on the ground you go up and go Coink with the hull and you realize it really was only as thick as a couple of coke cans You think so wait you guys got in that for how long and you slept on the surface of the moon and that thing They go in any moment So yeah, when you look at the how close they're pushing to the edge and then the computers of course 36k at memory You know barely capable of doing what they had to do, but they did it brilliantly So getting back to the core question, you know, how do we get that nasa back? Well I think we did the as hard as it was that was the easiest stuff to do in the solar system Earth orbit and then the moon and now mars is that you know, that's really going out there It's demanding a lot more for a lot less money than we had in time and Yeah, you know again part of it like I said is risk but but primarily political motivation willpower We had a perfect enemy in the soviet union in the 1960s. I'll show you I'm gonna show our missiles bigger than your missile, you know Interesting metaphor. Yeah, no, and it was the turn out name on the moon. Yeah Well, you know, and I still like that idea of hey, let's let's blow up nuclear weapons on the moon to show Well, it would have been kind of cool But um, you know, we had this this this arch enemy And more than improving to them. Hey, you know, we're the bigger dog on the on the beach because You could just send over nuclear missiles and do that We want to show the non-aligned nations and the countries are waffling. Well, should we follow the soviet camp or the american camp? Come with us. Yeah, we got better school. We got better technology. We got bigger rockets We went to the moon and then we decided to stop after three years So there's that political motivation. Some people think we're going to get that back because of china I don't personally but it could happen Because china in a couple of years may walk into a session of congress and go up the american delegation and say Here's that flag you left behind the moon. Paul levin. It's kind of bleached out But we thought you might want it back. It's like wait, you guys just went there and landed So who knows, you know, I can change everything. Yeah, I know a lot of nasa's Internal problem. I mean political issues challenges challenges. Thank you Come from having to represent various constituent bases Is is it even possible for nasa to Do do the pushes that we need A big government backed organization to do while making the entrenched Yeah, yeah, the the the people who make the hardware and have been making it since the 60s And we expect to have this money coming to us, right? Keeping them happy lobbying Congress yeah, you left the seaward out of that conversation. Yeah, right? Yeah I don't know, you know, wouldn't it be delightful as in china for the most part where they've separated those things And you get the executive order from the pilot bureau who's agreed. Okay Let's um, let's do this and this and this and we'll end up with people on mars in 2040 Go forth and fetch, you know, and they just get to do it because they don't have these chains of administration I don't have any chains of administration at least on the presidential end Not that i'm for that kind of form of government But I do like the idea of some enhanced continuity And not sending nasa off on these fruitless errands where you don't get to finish a program like we did the constellation Senate launch system. Yeah, there was a It's one way to go. Now she brought it in. Yeah Well done, wasn't there like a idea from a congress Congressional representative a couple years ago that that we should like approve nasa budgets on like a like a decade scale So that way the the goals and the the sort of you know, the points that we want to get to are Locked in for a long term period. So that way it's not, you know, every Administration fluctuating wildly back and forth like flapping it in the wind until it breaks There was that idea and I thought that sounds pretty good to me But then I was talking to a former deputy administrator of the agency who said No, I don't think you want to give them 10 year mandates Why not because it's just too easy to go off in the wrong direction It should be continuous oversight and revision But make it more continuous overwrite oversight and revision and shouldn't it be oversight by the right people? Well, hence the the national space council So hopefully that's the right group of people if you've ever met their talk to scott pace He's a brilliant guy Very very settled very logical really I think doing that group a lot of good Um and the people in it are pretty good now They have this advisory group which brings in an even larger set of voices underneath. So I think they're doing good work Um how much that will actually impact what nasa does is still something that we're kind of waiting to see And what it will be. I mean, I think they have done very well in bringing commercial in the conversations You were saying with this idea of putting a ryan on falcon heavy and new glad it's like a little what You say you're doing what? But with the cancellation of that that enhanced upper stage for sls You need to do something so and is uh is You know a lot of people like to place the entire blame of sls and Development and everything on nasa. Well, you know, I know a lot of people who will throw it 100 percent At their court, you know, nasa is the one to have botched this But is it really kind of nasa or is there also like, you know, you can throw some blame at contractors as well on the project Well, sls isn't botched. It's just going slowly It will work. I think it's proven technology when a space shuttle engine space shuttle derived srb's It'll work. It's just very slow and very expensive Um You know when you talk to nasa, there's a mixed reaction. There's some people wanted it some don't Marshall was big on it because it would made sense for them But I it was congress that said no you got to do this Because we've got a lot of people saying that you got to do it. So you got to do it Um And I think you know, there is one other Side to this which I hear mentioned very a little it's it's not likely But elan musk and jeff bezos could wake up tomorrow morning and go You know this rocket thing isn't making me much money. I don't think i'm going to do it anymore And then sls is your baby if you want heavy lift I don't see that happening somebody else who's coming behind them possibly the chinese who are now flying reusable rocket tests that Boy, do they look a lot like the falcon nine and you ask a journalist asked him That looks a lot like the falcon nine. He said of course it does. What do you expect? Thanks for the developments. Yeah So Yeah, I think it does make sense to have it. I just wish that It could be a little more lean mean and mainstreamed and you know possibly a higher percentage of cooperation with contractors over eight cents. I don't know Yeah, yeah, and now we got to build lunar landers. Yes, they put out that rfp, which is great Yeah, like because we were you know, there's a lot of us worried about You know having a a smaller iss out around the moon is kind of cool and we like the idea, but Can you like take that last? 120 miles or whatever it is down to and go back like we did a long time ago And so now that's been issued and Hopefully we'll see some development there because ultimately that's what we want to do We want to go to these places. We want to extract resources in these places because we're human beings We need them and we want people to be able to eventually get there The great thing about the moon is i'm sure you both know is you got water You got oxygen not just in the water, but in the very rocks and soil You got all these silicates. You got metals You got everything you need there to build whatever you want to why spend six or eight thousand dollars per gallon of water To launch it off of earth It's expensive. It may actually be more than that. I don't remember the exact number anymore because SpaceX has brought that down When you've got it all sitting out there The chinese know that that's what their robotic program is aimed at Yeah, kind of kind of proof of concept on those things like that. So yeah So is the is uh Is going to the moon sort of going to enable us to go to other places as well Or could we just could we just outright go to those other places? Just throw the fastball right in my face. So moon equals mars, right? Sure um Yes, and the big picture I believe it will is that the fastest way to do it probably not You know apollo was the fastest way to get to the moon Should we do that for mars? And make it expeditionary in nature as sortie Some people think so a lot of people say no don't do that. That's a dead end an apollo as brilliant as it was Didn't have to be a dead end But by the time they finished flying out the program, you know, and you know the last three were canceled and all that It kind of was that hardware was discontinued didn't have to be and the shuttle came in So, um You know is this the moon stepping stone? Yes. Does it have to be a stepping stone? Probably not but I think more realistically. It's the only thing we're going to be able to sell over the next 10 years To the public when you talk about tax-supported stuff If elan musk Holds up his aspirational deal and says i'm going to be at mars by 2024. I'm still not quite sure Maybe somebody around here knows something about this, but i'm still not quite sure You know how the radiation protection in the bfr slash starship is going to work because I just don't see it in what few Schematics I've seen. Yeah, because you're going to be out there a long time But that doesn't mean you can't do it. So I think that part's thrilling, but yeah, let's make the moon away station. Let's get there. Let's get settled settled in Let's really work out this in-situ resource extraction utilization process So we know what we're doing. We get to mars. We do have an experiment on the mars 2020 rover called moxie Which is going to grab a bit of atmosphere and extract useful things out of it. That's good. Make some oxygen So that's a good start, but it's very small I think we we get to an industrial scale on the moon doing these things and now you're in business Now you get people going out there living in in blue orbit possibly as astronauts living on the surface of the moon working Really figuring it out You know, can we actually go down live inside lava tubes and not end up having each other for dinner by accident? Yeah, let's make sure probably but let's make sure and then mars makes an awful lot of sense Yeah, and then we'll just hop on the pan am you know aryan 3 and head on up, right? Oh, you know, you're a heartbreaker, man I still look at those pictures and I think why didn't they I mean pan am isn't even with us anymore But that was such a beautiful vision and they even sold us little tickets Mm-hmm. You know, you could get your ticket your certificate in 1968 while you were waiting in the line to go see 2001 space odyssey to get your pan am clipper ride What if they'll honor that at some point, you know, there's no pan am yeah Well, I mean someone else can pick it up whoever does it, right? Yeah I actually got contacted by a lawyer a few years ago who claimed to own I guess the pan am identity is split up into seven or eight different edities. He had one of them I thought What could you do with that and then I found I was sort of thinking like the mars one people I thought you know, okay, it's not good idea But it seemed like an idea at the time because pan am that whole thing was really inspirational and as you know, there's groups still trying to do that kind of thing but I think you know really The musks and the bezosas and the bransons are the ones that are going to make that operate and Branson I mean virgin galactic has been Really in the news lately. So I'm excited. They're close and hopefully virgin orbit is going to be coming into the news pretty soon, too So, yeah, yeah, well and how can you go wrong with 747? I mean, yeah in the line here the lifting that's perfect Yeah, I mean sometimes I drive past it and I see it Yeah, just sitting there, you know out there and just like man. I can't wait to see that Do you stop and sneak into the hangar? Um, I'm I tip I like, uh, not Being asked to leave places. So especially with guns by that. Yeah, typically. So yeah, so sometimes it's worth it though It can be so yeah, I was gonna say any stories a couple couple times Armstrong, right? So I know it's Dada's kind of nodding over there Uh, it's sort of a certain door. Oh do tell. Yes Certain door that said SR 71 personnel on it that everybody stopped at to take photos and we were told very quickly to move along so Yeah, that was it wasn't the national people telling us that though. So they're very nice. I was shooting in an air show years ago They had invited us to come shoot video and I'm walking up towards the thick was an f18 and suddenly this kid You know, it's pulling guard duty. I hear this clink looking over and there's an m16 It's not aimed at me or at m4, but it's kind of held like this. It's like, no, you can't look down the engine duct Oh, which is okay. But tell me before right? Yeah, you know, it's in there and you know with stories You are a writer. Yeah, so you're not just like a super expert on spaceflight and also right exceptionally good at talking about uh, a Very interesting time at griffin the observatory. Yeah, you also right like you just talked about space journalism And and you in your involvement in it. Yeah, so so what so like So what what does that entail? You know like writing about space? Yeah, because like you you're helping deliver That maybe maybe helping work against that pr problem. Oh you make it sound so noble. Thank you I wrote fiction as a kid And after reading my own stuff and setting around some friends I realized that the kindest thing I could do for the world is never try to write fiction again Because I like my my readers and my fans. It's like I will not Make them go through that But at the same time so I went to UCLA as an astronomy major originally And I lasted about a year and a half until I got to differential calculus Which most people would have taken before they went to UCLA, but I was a little bit behind the power curve and I went Oh, oh, astronomy is math. Oh This is really bad. So that's when I changed over to film school and journalism and realized that The really fun part was not being a sub average scientist or engineer, which would have been me You know, I'd be the guy with the big pencil. Well Kind of figure the equations and calculator Um the fun part was talking to people about it and communicating these stories So that's what got me the tv in the first place is doing documentaries about it But then you're trying to tell the whole apollos project in 44 minutes and say what do you mean? And and you're up through apollo 13 at minute 39 And then for the next five minutes, you got to wrap up the other four and it happens every time I thought this is like writing for tv guide or now you'd say twitter, right? You guys don't remember tv guide. Oh, I remember tv guide little little things that say, you know, here's what it is What's yeah, a little tiny bit. Yeah It's no way to tell stories. So then when I started getting book offers I thought wait a minute. You're gonna actually pay me something To to act like a pig in mud and get down and roll around this story about space for a couple of months or a year And then other people are gonna read it and maybe like it Well, yeah, that's how book authoring works Boy golly, you know, I was kind of like a country hick getting his first car And uh and have never looked back. It is just the most fun except for being on this show that you can have No, really, I mean, I really like coming down here. This is every time Oh, this is so cool. Yes, but but yeah writing that stuff is great and um I just wish that I could get sometimes a little more access to the big players You know, you got to really hustle if you're gonna get in with spacex get him in forage and get in with some of the others Because you know, they want to control the outflow of pr. So if you're writing those stories you have to get clever and You know look around the curtain sometimes It's the wizard look Ignore that man But yeah, I mean, you know We we most of our content for at astra is written externally Anybody around here that might have some skill in that area Wait, where do we submit if only there were some people that were writers? Yes, yeah the editorial email addresses in there and that that Funny-looking guy with the I think we know this guy. Yeah It's a good nice shirt. So feel thank you I've had it for way too long. So feel free to to pitch And um, we do we do pay. Yeah, excellent. How about that? Yeah, we pay and it's in print And I gotta say, you know, so many I mean, there's a lot of good magazines out there about space You know, there's there's the planetary report from planetary society And there's mercury from the astronomy side society pacific and a bunch of others But they're not a print a lot of them anymore because it is so expensive to do that So one of the things I love about the nss. There are many is that they're willing to commit to keeping this in print and we Operate on a very tight budget with the staff of two and a half Just not a lot But I mean being able to put it on paper is really special. Yeah, yeah You know, I don't I don't know if in 20 years paper magazines will still exist, but I'm glad they do now Yeah, yeah, it's it's nice to see that uh, that there's something still continuing You know with space journalism, especially stuff independent from major major networks and other news groups because they kind of tend to Not necessarily get it wrong, but they the skim over details that are actually pretty important You know and and a lot of the cool stuff too. They'll forget about including that. It's so pre digested It kind of is you bring up an interesting point though. You've got to appeal to a certain audience, right? You're going to sell these things now. We have a built-in audience because this goes to membership So, you know 10,000 plus issues plus the extended members which puts it up to I think 30 Which isn't bad For the next issue, which is the Apollo special issue, which I think I mentioned which is going to be longer Heavier cover stock But I think it's going to be a third longer in terms of pages that is going to be available to the public So we're going to send it out digitally possibly in print digitally for sure. We're going on the new platforms um And that's exciting because I'm the whole reason they joined the nss in the first place was I saw a copy of this magazine on the newsstand and paid. I don't know that outrageous price of $2.99 or something And I was reading this. I said these guys are cool. I want to join this organization So i'm really hoping at least once a year to get a special issue out To the world so they can see what we're doing and come join The rest of the year will probably be a member benefit for a while But ultimately I think it makes sense to open it up to the public because they're just not that many out there And this isn't this is an immediate news like space.com where they get something new every day And it's up there in eight minutes because their writers work really fast This is a quarterly that really looks at longer term trends. I don't think it's in that issue I think it's the previous one we did a big write up on the sls Which a wonderful writer named john cross wrote And uh, it was a tough story. Yeah, you're talking about where it's headed and what's happening with the upper stage and what that means and You know, what what's the net result of all this going to be what's again? I get us. What are the challenges and he did a really good story So I think that's something that should be seen beyond the immediate membership But if you join Well worth it. Yeah, yeah And if uh, you know, if someone's really interested in kind of like getting into journalism, especially like space journalism Like what are some of the things that they should really consider running running away? No You in terms of of getting the the work Yeah, well, I mean like, you know, what are some of the things that you have to think about like You know, you got to grab contacts within the industry Obviously and and you might have to go to things and other stuff Like what's some of the stuff that someone should be prepared to do in order to to make it stock in a lot of top Ramen because it's interesting, you know, we're talking about this before before we started When I started writing books in 2003 or four ish You know a first time author could get a commission of $35,000. Sure. We trust you. Here's a bunch of money go write a book Now if you get anything this is nonfiction If you get anything for your first time commission It's probably going to be four or $5,000 or you're going to be self publishing self publishing The average self-published book sells 12 copies per year 12 One two and that's to relatives and friends. So it's very challenging journalism is a little different But what's so interesting there is In a way, there's more opportunity than ever before because there's so many venues But they're not curated very well for the most part So if you're working for not not to want to impugn anybody in particular, but let's say yahu news You've seen some of the stories in yahu news some are pretty good. They're usually picked up from another source Some are not very good. They're often internally generated um Yes, I've seen stuff that I've written that was machine translated in hindi and then machine translated back into english It's like I feel like my labrador looking at calculus going well that doesn't make any sense um So, you know cost is the big thing and they want stuff cheap if you guys have explored this You know that there are people that will proudly offer you $15 a story for what could be a two or three days of work Well people really live on this even then You know brought it slava. Can you look at the cut of money? So I think um, there's there's two categories of writers that are really killing it right now very young people That don't have a lot of expenses and are fresh out of school Or maybe they haven't they haven't taken journalism school at all don't need to But who just jamming into this because they want to and money's not not critical And then guys my age who are looking at retirement and maybe social security if there's anything left We got there who are saying hey money's no longer a big factor because I'm retired But that big chunk in the middle which is where most of the people are should be doing it Who are part way through their careers their polish. They're developed. They're smart. They've got experience They know how to run down sources. They know what's okay to do. What's not okay to do How to really create compelling engaging breaking stories Those are the ones we need and that's the hard part because it's very difficult for them to make a living anymore So I would say if you're looking for advice for people Start early Find what you're going to focus on and then really you know just bang on that as much as possible If it's the technology side great if it's the policy side great. There's not enough people writing about policy It's a little bit of a a bit more challenging area in some ways If you're going to do history Well, don't do it until I'm done. Okay, because I don't need the competition But if you're going to do history, you know do that and and really just focus on that and specialize and then you'll soon be Famous anyway, I was going to say Richard famous You'll you'll be famous Yeah Yeah, so if people want to know more about you and also about your books as well How can they do that? Oh, this means we're wrapping up I don't want to wrap up. I got so many more observatory stories to tell That's for after dark. Yeah, okay. I have a website called pile books.com. It's pyla books.com not like it sounds It's not how you spell my name and um This magazine is a good way to keep track and then I do radio here in la kfi, which is kind of our blowtorch 50,000 watt Talk station every couple of weeks. I do wg in chicago in the overnight show that's interesting because you get all the interesting calls Whenever went to the moon um And then I have a podcast on my heart called Cool space news by rod pile Complete with the lost in space theme music. Nice. I know how to groove man. Sweet. Yeah, that sounds great So rod, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it And you know, you've got so much stuff to share with everybody Uh, we we really encourage everyone to go and and read and uh and check it all out Yeah, they're gonna get free books What? Reading so good. Thank you for keeping the torch. My pleasure. Oh god. Yeah Yeah, and to wrap up our show We are going to thank all of our patrons of tomorrow. Uh, these folks help us out Financially, you know, they help give money to us that allows us to bring these things to you And we wouldn't be able to do any of this, you know share rod story All the other fun things with that actually talk about What you can do to help spread the good word about space flight and other things without Without your support So you are all critical to helping make this show happen And we're so thrilled that you all feel like being a part of this show So thank you guys so much for watching tomorrow episode 12.09 and we'll see you next week. Bye. Bye